Back culture with a hotel tax on tourists, says V&A chief Tristram Hunt

A hotel tax should be levied on tourists to fund Britain’s culture, the director of the Victoria & Albert museum has said.

Tristram Hunt wants local government to be able to levy the tax to support the organisations offering free entry, which are dealing with declining public subsidy. He said that visitors to other big cities in the world paid a hotel tax.

Mr Hunt also defended the rising price of exhibition tickets, arguing that there should be moves towards flexible pricing — so that prices would be higher on a busy Saturday afternoon. While the V&A has bucked the overall trend of declining visitor numbers, its public subsidy has dropped by 30 per cent since 2010.

At The Times and Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature…

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